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If you need to develop a four-cylinder engine in a hurry, here's one way to do it. Photo by Pontiac Division, General Motors

Cut-Down Engine of the Week: Pontiac Trophy 4

The 540-pound, four-cylinder love child of John DeLorean and Smokey Yunick

September 20, 2017

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Chevrolet introduced a straight-four engine displacing 153 cubic inches (2.5 liters) for the 1962 Chevy II, and it was two-thirds of a 230-cubic-inch straight-six. The year before that, however, the Pontiac Division had shocked the American car-buying public with the massive four-cylinder engine in the new Tempest. Displacing a beefy 195.5 cubic inches (3.2 liters, and that's not a typo), the Pontiac Trophy-4 was made up of one cylinder bank and most of the block of Pontiac's storied 389-cubic-inch V8 and will be hard to top as the weirdest cut-down engine to come out of Detroit.

Here's a Trophy-4 that I shot in a discarded Tempest in Los Angeles. Photo by Murilee Martin

The Tempest was the brainchild of John Z. DeLorean— yes, that DeLorean— and it boasted some fascinating-for-the-era innovations, including a rear-mounted transaxle and a "rope-drive" flexible driveshaft. Unfortunately for DeLorean, the Pontiac Division didn't have any radical new engines on the shelf at the time (the overhead-cam Pontiac straight-six came a bit later), so he hired his buddy Smokey Yunick to come up with a quick-and-dirty solution (at least, that's what Yunick claimed in his rambling but very enjoyable memoir). This involved retaining as many components and tooling of the big 389 V8 as possible, which resulted in a spectacularly heavy (540 pounds!) and rough-running (balance shafts cost money!) straight-four engine. It made good power, though, and squishy engine mounts kept most Tempest occupants from losing their dental fillings on trips. The Trophy-4 didn't last long, getting the axe after the 1963 model year, but it remains the most memorable of cut-down engines.